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Ezra was so full of faith that he transported millions of dollars without an armed guard. This certainty of faith came from knowing and recognizing the hand of God. Join me, Pastor Richard, as we search out what it means to have the hand of God upon our lives.

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Good morning, church. Today's scripture reading is taken from Exra chapter eight, verse twenty four to thirty six. Priests to guard offerings verse twenty four. Then I set apart twelve of the leading priests, Sheribiah, Hasabiah, and ten of their kinsmen with them. And I weighed out to them the silver and the gold and the vessels, the offering of the house of our God that the king and his counsellors and his lords and all Israel there present had offered. I weighed out into their hand six hundred and fifty talents of silver, and silver vessels worth two hundred talents, and one hundred talents of gold, twenty seven sorry, twenty bowls of gold worth one thousand dericks, and two vessels of fine bronze, bright bronze as precious as gold. And I said to them, You are holy to the Lord, and the vessels are holy, and the silver and the gold are a free will offering to the Lord, the God of your fathers. Guard them and keep them until you weigh them before the chief priests and the Levites and the heads of fathers' houses in Israel at Jerusalem, within the chambers of the house of the Lord. So the priests and the Levites took over the weight of the silver and the gold and the vessels to bring them to Jerusalem to the house of our God. Verse 31. Then we departed from the river Ahava on the twelfth day of the first month to go to Jerusalem. The hand of our God was on us, and he delivered us from the hand of the enemy and from ambushes by the way. We came to Jerusalem and there we remained three days. On the fourth day within the house of our God, the silver and the gold and the vessels were weighed into the hands of Merrimaph, the priest, son of Uriah, and with him was Elizabeth, the son of Benhai, and with them were the Levites, Josebat, the son of Joshua, and Nordia, the son of Benai. The whole was counted and weighed, and the weight of everything was recorded. At that time those who had come from captivity, the returned exiles, offered burnt offerings to the God of Israel, twelve bulls for all Israel, ninety-six rams, seventy-seven lambs, and as a sin offering, twelve male goats. All this was a burnt offering to the Lord. They also delivered the king's commissions to the king's settre and to the governors of the province beyond the river, and they aided the people and the house of God. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

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Good morning, church. Thank you, good morning. It's good to be together. And thank you, Sister Judith, for the reading this morning. When preparing a message, there's many things that go into it. But the key thing is asking the Lord, Lord, what do you want to speak to us through this passage? And I must tell you, when I first looked at this passage, I was indeed praying. Lord, what is there for us from this? It's a short uh section of verses, and it seems very descriptive, but uh praise the Lord. There's something here for us today. All right. I want to ask you a question. How much money do you feel comfortable walking around with in your wallet or your pocketbook or whatsoever? Uh we we don't need anyone to speak out loud here. How much do you feel comfortable with? Do you feel comfortable with I don't know, $80 in your pocket? $200? I I don't know, something more. At which point do you feel a bit uncomfortable with how much uh money or wealth you're carrying with you? How much do you keep on your MRT card? I I you know I like to look around and observe things as you're queuing to tap out of the bus or the MRT if you're doing that. Sometimes you see the little readout of the person in front of you. And there have been times I say, Wow, this person very brave. Wow, they have that much still on their card, they're not afraid of losing it or something. Now, being from New York, New York State, um, I perhaps pride myself on being street smart. All right. Um, you know, if the door's locked, if it's a simple door, I know how to uh get in without the key. I I know how to climb over fences. Um there are different different things, and I feel that I'm pretty street smart, right? And I feel that if I'm in a sketchy area, you know, I can recognize it. You you you're sort of aware of the surroundings and you can tell I better be on my guard here. And so I feel that I I'm I'm all right. You know, I know I don't put my wallet in my back pocket, especially in certain places. Keep the wallet in the front pocket. Uh but you know, despite that confidence, and it's probably overconfidence, uh, I have been pickpocketed once in my life. And this was near a bus station in China. Yeah, yeah, I I and you know, I the the thief they didn't take actually my wallet, it was my phone. The phone was not in my back pocket, and yet it still happened, and I didn't recognize it till probably 20 minutes later. And so uh, you know, I I thought that I had enough awareness it couldn't happen to me, but it did. And so at some point, um, you know, we we may feel uncomfortable with how much we are carrying on ourselves because we're worried about what could happen. If something happened, how much would I lose? How much of a loss would this be to me? And I bring all this up because um, you know, being aware of how much you're carrying, it isn't about fear of what could happen. It's about caution, it's about wisdom. And so we're looking at a passage where there's a lot of money mentioned, actually. Uh it ties in with uh Pastor Daniel's sermon from last week, and we're looking at the second wave of returnees who were gonna travel from Babylon all the way to Jerusalem. The first wave, anyone remember who led that first wave of returnees? Zerubbabel, right? It was Zerubbabel who led that first wave. And there was about commentators will say about 49,000 people in that first wave. So here we're coming to the second wave led by Ezra. And uh going through the commentaries, they're not sure. Maybe it was about 1,800 people, maybe it was as much as 3,000. Uh, it was a much smaller number that were returning back this time. And this is taking place 80 years after Zerubbabel led the first wave. So this is a a lot of time has passed. Reading the book of Ezra, it's just a short distance, but actually 80 years have passed since that first wave return. And so Ezra and everyone with him, they have known no other home but Babylon. They've never been to uh Jerusalem, they've never been to this place. The only home that they've known has been back there in Babylon. They had homes, they had businesses, they had relationships, they had community, and they are traveling to a homeland that they had never been to. And so if you uh look at the map with me, and I think we can uh move forward to the map, please. Thank you. All right. Uh you see this journey that they took, it took about four months long. And first they were following the river Ahasa northwest, and then at a certain point they needed to leave the river, and they went west through the dry areas and then and then to the southwest and so forth. And so they spent this whole journey, four months, they spent a lot of time in uh remote places. They spent a lot of time out far away from civilization. And so it was a long and dangerous journey. And the remote areas, uh, you know, you can't carry water for four months, so they would have found watering points along the way. And those were areas of danger for them because if there's going to be an ambush, it'd be near the watering point because you can't avoid the watering points. You must go to them. And you want to run, where are you going to run? You're out in the dry areas, there's nowhere to go. And so there was danger for them as they traveled. And if I I move back just a little bit to Ezra chapter 8, verse 22, it says, For I was ashamed to ask the king for a band of soldiers and horsemen to protect us against the enemy on our way, since we had told the king, the hand of our God is for good on all who seek him, and the power of his wrath is against all who forsake him. And despite the length of the journey, despite the danger of bandits in remote areas, Ezra did not ask for the armed escort. And so I bring us back to that question: how much money do you feel comfortable carrying around with you? Because when we read through the amount of wealth that they were transporting back to Jerusalem, uh, you know, this was something that the Persian king had sort of collected. He had given a bunch himself, and there was a collection from uh the Israelites and different ones, and it was all sent as an offering. But I want to ask, did it really stand out to you? Okay, we're you can see uh on the screen right now, you can see how much they brought with them. Anyone want to guess how much this would all be worth today? Go ahead. If you want to give a guess, just call it out here. Sorry? Eighty million. Wow, all right. Any anyone else? Like an auction, eighty million. Do I hear ninety million? Ninety million, anyone? Yes. One million. Billions into the billions, wow, all right. Anyone else? All right, you know, um one other thing before we move forward. How much do you think all of this money weighed? Why don't you tell your neighbor how much weight do you think all of this weighed? All right. I hope you've told your neighbor. You know how much this was worth, this was worth $464 million. All right. Um I went through the math so you don't have to. But uh, if we look at the price of gold and silver today, and we know how much um these weights were, more or less, one talent, how much it weighed, uh, the the golden dericks, the coins, the Persian coins, all this, it came to $464 million. And so all this money that was sent, it was considered to be sanctified. This was holy and set apart for the temple of the God of Israel. And this is an incredible thing because right now in today, many people are very skeptical about even God's existence. But back then there was no question about the spiritual realm. They knew that God existed. Even the Persian king who wasn't following uh the religion of the Jews, who wasn't following Yahweh, and yet he believed that this God existed. He existed in this territory in Israel, and it was important not to offend this God. And so he said, All right, you you can go back, and as you go, you're gonna bring all this money so that this God in this area will be appeased. So even those who didn't believe in Yahweh didn't follow him as the Jews did, yet they knew that he existed and he had power. And so $464 million today is how much that would be worth. It's a staggering amount of wealth. We can't even comprehend it really. I certainly can't. And they didn't have banknotes, it was all in gold and silver. And this came to 32,308 kilograms, 32,000 kg. This was a lot of money in weight as well. And so if we were to just average it out, we're gonna say maybe there's 3,000 people returning back. Well, that's almost 11 kg per person carrying of money. If every man, every woman, every child, young, old, everything, if every person was splitting it out equally, that's 11 kg per person. This is before you you're packing any water because you're traveling through dry places. This is before you any food, any clothing. So this is really something incredible. And I hope that they took camels and donkeys to help carry this load. It is an amazing, astounding amount of wealth. And Ezra was ashamed to ask the king for an armed guard. He didn't ask for any armed guard at all because he believed that the hand of God was upon them. And I'm gonna ask you this morning, what does it what does the hand of God mean? We know it's not a material hand, it's not a physical hand, uh, because God doesn't have a physical body. His spirit, his uh something that we are not yet able to fully comprehend. And we know this because when Christ came down, he had to take on flesh. He didn't already have flesh. He came down, he took on flesh. And if God were material, he'd be subject to material things. Uh physical things could keep him out, science could measure him, uh, he would not be omnipresent, he couldn't be in all places at once, uh, he could not be all powerful if he were physical. There'd be certain limitations. So uh is not material. And I wonder that there's an interesting thought to me at least. As Christ raised from the dead, after on the third day he rose again, and the tomb was empty, his body was no longer there. Right? Are you with me? And so when Jesus appeared to many witnesses, most of them recognized him straight away. Others they didn't at first, but then they later recognized it. Why is that? I wonder. Have you ever wondered what our bodies will be like when we're with the Lord and we're given new bodies? When everything is made new, what will our bodies be like? What age body will we have? Will it look like what we have now or not? I wonder. I wonder. And we'll only know on the other side of the veil. But returning to the point at hand here, um, we know that the hand of our God doesn't refer to a physical hand. But what exactly does this figure of speech mean? And you may think you know, but I bet if you talk to your neighbor, you may find out, well, we actually we have different, different ideas. But it's important for us to understand this because until you learn to recognize the hand of God and the world around you, your faith will be weak. Until you learn to recognize the hand of God in your school, in your education, your faith will be weak. Until you learn to recognize the hand of God in your workplace, your faith is going to be weak. Until you learn to recognize the hand of God in your retirement, your faith will be weak. We must learn to recognize the hand of God. Ezra, he recognized the hand of God and he learned to trust it. And we know from our passage today that he walked out that trust. When he knew the hand of God was there, he didn't want an armed God. He didn't need it because he wanted all glory to go to God, because he knew the hand of God was upon them. And so this passage is really bracketed by two verses, and that's Ezra chapter 8, verse 22, and then again in 31. In 22, it says, I was ashamed to ask the king for the band of soldiers and horsemen to protect us against the enemy on our way, since we had told the king, the hand of our God is for good on all who seek him, and the power of his wrath is against all who forsake him. And then in verse thirty-one, uh, then we departed from the river Ahava on the twelfth day of the first month to go to Jerusalem. The hand of our God was on us, and he delivered us from the hand of the enemy and from ambushes by the way. The hand of God was stronger than the hand of the enemy. And we will be strong in our faith when we recognize the hand of God around us. The whole company, they experienced the hand of God defending them and hiding them as they traveled. Scripture doesn't tell us that there were no adversaries out there. Instead, it states that God delivered them. God delivered them from enemies and ambushes. It was a work of God. It was the hand of God. And so, if we want to try and define the hand of God, we say it refers to his sovereignty, his influence, his power, and his guidance. And in our lives, we can find the hand of God just as much in the no as in the yes. We find the hand of God just as much in the no, the spoken no as in the yes. And for some of you here this morning, uh, some doors, some opportunities, they remain closed to you. And if you are unable to see the hand of God at work, it's something that's confusing. Why is this not opening? Why it it should be I should be able to make the way here. Why why do I keep encountering all these. These roadblocks. Friends, sometimes the hand of God is in the no, and we don't understand the why. We don't understand why these opportunities are blocked off, but God does, because it is the hand of God blocking off this direction from you because He has a different plan and a purpose for you. And we know at other times uh he's in the yes as well. And uh, you know, I've for me I've experienced it both ways. And there was about uh age 26, there was a major, major life decision that I had made. And I put everything into it, and then God closed the door. And I didn't recognize it at the time, but I began to recognize in the rear view mirror this was the hand of God. I experienced the yes to in China when we were moving into a new area and we needed to have a property, a location for an office, and went into that place and I walked around the town and I prayed, Lord, where would you have us be? Where would be the best thing? We're setting this up for your kingdom to be advanced, for your glory. Where is the best place? And you know what? I walked and I walked and I looked through, and the place that I thought was the best place happened to be rented out already. It was occupied. And yet I trusted the Lord. Lord, I believe this is from you. And we went in and we spoke with the people who are the owners, and God opened the door. He gave us favor. So the hand of God, sometimes it's in the no, and sometimes it's in the yes. And we need to learn to recognize the hand of God in our lives. Brothers and sisters, until you learn to recognize the hand of God in your life, your faith will be weak. Life will be bewildering, it will be confusing. We don't understand. If we don't see that invisible hand, the hand of God, things just don't make sense for us. We must learn to recognize the hand of God at work. And so if we go back to our passage today, Ezra he recounts in verse 31 that the hand of God was on them. He delivered them from ambushes, he delivered them from the hand of the enemy. The hand of God was stronger than the enemy. And after the months, four months of journeying, most of that through remote places, they reached Jerusalem. And so we we read they had a few days of rest from that long, long journey, and then they brought all the money to be counted. What was it? 464 million sing, 32,000 kg worth of wealth, and they brought it to the temple and it was counted in and it was recorded, and nothing was missing. Nothing had been stolen, nothing had been embezzled, it was all there, and this was the hand of God at work. This was the hand of God at work. In Romans chapter 8, verse 28, it says that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. And church, when you submit yourself to the hand of God, whether that hand is coming in the form of a yes or coming in the form of a no, when you submit to him, he's gonna work out all things for good. And I know many of you, you've experienced this before in your life. When we submit fully to him, he works it out for good. Doesn't always mean we get what we want, doesn't mean that we're going to be for good, doesn't mean we're gonna be very wealthy, we're gonna be enjoying all the wonderful things of life necessarily, but he's gonna work it out for good. He's gonna work it out for things that are good when we look at eternity. Right now, some days feel like an eternity. I mean, if we're honest, some days feel like an eternity. Will this day never end? And I know I've been guilty of saying that myself sometimes. I just want this day to be over. It feels like it'll never end. But the reality is, this life we're living now is just a tiny sliver compared to eternity. We don't get to see beyond the veil of this lifespan we have on earth. But it is just a tiny sliver compared to eternity. And so God is working all things for good, knowing the future. He knows the past, he knows the present, he knows the future, he knows it in full. And so he wants to work together all things for good for those who are called by his name, for those who are putting their lives in him, for those who are submitting to the hand of God on their lives. Brothers and sisters, we need to learn to recognize the hand of God on our lives, or else our faith will be weak. Paul, and this is uh the Apostle Paul, and he's recounting in Acts chapter 26, he's recounting how it was that he encountered the Lord. And this was back when he was still going around, he was persecuting Christians. So in Acts chapter 26, verse 14, uh, this is what he heard the Lord say to him. He was recounting it. Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads. A goat is a sharp stick, right? It's a stick with a sharp end. And so uh if you're on a beast of burden, maybe it's a farm animal or whatsoever, uh, this is a stick to jab them with, to get through that thick hide, to get them to go the way you need them to go. And so this is the image. Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It's hard for you to kick against the goats. Paul was kicking against the hand of God. God had a plan and purpose for his life, and yet Saul he hadn't recognized it. He hadn't recognized the hand of God, and then so he was persecuting the Christians instead of recognizing that they were people whose lives had been changed because of Christ. And so we we too, Paul need to learn to recognize the hand of God. We need to learn to recognize the hand of God in our lives. We pray that you've administered too by the Word of God today. If you'd like to know more about Ishun Christian Church, please visit our website at yccanglican.com. Have a blessed day.